


Tested

by LibraryMage



Series: Leverage Rebels AU [5]
Category: Leverage, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Autistic Character, Autistic Eliot Spencer, Autistic Parker, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Parker's bunny, Past Child Death, sort of. slight reference to force bonds anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 08:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11436999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryMage/pseuds/LibraryMage
Summary: Sophie brings Parker to the Jedi temple on Lothal to face the things that are holding her back.





	Tested

**Author's Note:**

> warning for: hallucinations kind of, reference to past (canonical) death of a child, (imagined) death of a major character

Parker wasn’t doing much of anything, really.  She lay on her side, Bunny clutched against her chest, biting down on the base of her thumb, just above her wrist.  There was a soft knock at the door.

“Hmm?”

“It’s me.”  That was Sophie’s voice.  “Can I come in?”

“Uh-huh,” Parker said, sitting up, Bunny still on her lap.  Sophie entered the room, leaving the door open, and sat down on Parker’s bunk beside her.

“I want you to know this isn’t anything bad,” Sophie said.  “But there’s something I need to talk to you about.  Are you okay to talk now?”  This was serious and she didn’t want to bring it up when Parker was in need of a quiet day.

“Yeah,” Parker said, nodding.

“I think you’re ready for the next step in your training,” Sophie said.  “It’s a test.”

“What do you mean by test?” Parker asked, her feet twitching nervously and her grip on Bunny tightening just a little.  That word had never exactly had a great meaning for her.

“You’ll have to face whatever’s holding you back,” Sophie explained, choosing her words with even more than her usual level of care.  She didn’t want to scare Parker away from this, but she still wanted to be honest with her about what she was being asked to do.  “We all have something, and this -- it helps you confront it, so you can move past it or make it work for you instead of against you.”

Parker tensed up, her shoulders rising just a little.  So far, no matter what assurances Sophie gave her, this was sounding bad.  Sophie reached out and petted Bunny’s head.  Her way of physically comforting Parker without actually touching her.

“Whatever it is, you’ll be the only one who knows it,” she said.  “You won’t have to tell me or anyone else.  This is just for you.”

That made Parker relax a little.  If she had to have her weaknesses exposed, the last thing she wanted was for her team to see them.

“If you don’t think you’re ready to do this --”

“I am,” Parker said, only realizing once she’d said it that the words had come out a little too forcefully.  If Sophie noticed -- and Parker was sure she did -- she didn’t say anything about it.

“Then let’s get going,” Sophie said with a smile.

* * *

 

Parker had had no idea there was a Jedi temple on Lothal.  As Sophie piloted _Lucille_ toward it, Parker gazed out the window of the ship, staring at the rock formation ahead of them.  She could _feel_ something inside it, pulling at her, like when Hardison gently tugged on her hair to get her attention.

Eliot was with them.  He’d been reluctant, but Sophie had convinced him to come along.  It would be smart to have someone with them to keep watch for any signs that the Imperials were watching the temple and had noticed their presence.

Kanan was with them, too.  Supposedly to back up Eliot, just in case.  But really, Parker knew he didn’t trust Eliot near the temple.

Sophie landed _Lucille_ close enough to the temple that it wouldn’t be easy to spot at first glance, hidden among the rocks.  As the four of them left the ship, Eliot gently clapped her on the shoulder.

“Good luck, kid,” he said.

“Who needs luck?” Parker asked, looking back at him and smiling before she followed Sophie toward the mountain the temple was hidden in.

“You’re not going with them?” Kanan asked.

“Into a Jedi temple?” Eliot said.  “Something tells me that wouldn’t end well for anyone.  I ain’t meant to be there.”

* * *

 

Parker didn’t stare at the stone.  When it came to getting inside places built to keep people out, what you could see on the outside could only tell you so much.  The real tricks were hidden under the surface, whether it was the pins in a lock, heat sensors disguised as part of a wall, or in this case, a hidden door that she had to figure out how to open.

Parker crouched to the ground, her hand pressed into the dirt, closing her eyes as she felt down into the earth and out around her.  There were caverns and tunnels stretching out and twisting around beneath her, almost like a strangely-organized anthill.  The stone felt strange, like more than just normal rock.  Her mind drifted to the crystal that now lived in her lightsaber, how it had always felt almost alive, like it had a will of its own.  The ground where she now stood felt like that.  There was something it wanted from her -- no, from them.

“We have to open it together,” she said as she stood up and turned back to face Sophie.  “Except you knew that, didn’t you?”

Sophie only smiled and took Parker’s hand.  Without even needing to discuss it, the two of them reached out together, their minds twining around each other like vines.  As they brushed against that almost-living presence in the stone, it began to shift under their mental touch.

As they watched, the stone lifted from within the ground and they could see the door that led under the earth.  Parker glanced back over her shoulder toward where Eliot and Kanan stood.  She knew Eliot noticed her looking back at him and felt a flash of warmth in her chest.  Or his.  Or maybe both.

“Looks like you passed the first part,” Sophie said, squeezing her hand.  Together, the two of them walked through the door and descended into the temple.

The room they entered had no light source that Parker could see, but it seemed to generate its own light.  It wasn’t exactly coming from the walls, but it was there, filling the room with an eerie dim glow.  At the opposite end from where they’d entered was another door.  Beyond it was complete darkness.

Out of the corner of her eye, Parker caught sight of something and turned her head to see a body.  It wasn’t fully skeletonized yet, but it was close.  It had been down here for a long time.  She glanced around the room and, seeing two other bodies, glanced back at the door they’d come through.  It hit her that the rock they’d raised from the ground could easily fall, sealing them inside.

“Were they trapped here?” she asked, not knowing why she expected Sophie to know the answer.

“In a way,” Sophie said.  “Their apprentices went into the temple and never came out.  So they kept waiting.”

Parker’s eyes widened a little.  “Seriously?” she asked, suddenly nervous.  If she’d known this test could end with her getting Sophie stuck down here until she died, she wasn’t sure she’d have agreed to do it.

“I’ll be fine, Parker,” Sophie said.  “So will you.”

“I take it you’re not coming with me, then.”

Sophie shook her head.  “Like I told you,” she said, “whatever you see in there is for you alone.  Don’t worry.  I know you can do this.”

Parker nodded.  She didn’t mind going in alone.  She was used to working alone.  It was how she worked best.  And it’s not like she was afraid of the dark or tight spaces or the creepy things that usually lived in dark, underground tunnels.

She took a breath and walked through the opening.  She jumped as she heard a grinding sound from behind her and turned to see a stone door sliding down, closing her inside the tunnel.

Parker stood still as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.  She didn’t understand how they did it.  As far as she could tell, there was no light source in here, either.  But as she began to see more clearly, she started to make her way through the tunnel.  As she walked, she reached out and ran her fingertips along the rock wall, taking comfort in the feeling of the stone gently scraping against her skin.  She could feel something else, almost like little sparks jumping from the stone into her.  This place really was alive somehow.

After a few minutes, Parker found herself in another room carved out of the rock.  It was much smaller than the first one she’d been in with Sophie.  It was just a junction, really.  In front of her was a wall with three entrances to three other tunnels.  She squinted, trying to see farther down each tunnel, not wanting to choose the wrong one and get trapped.  But they all looked the same.

“It’s this way.”

Parker froze at the sound of the familiar voice.  She could vaguely see someone a few feet into the tunnel to her left, but…it couldn’t be him.  She took a few hesitant steps forward, her heart pounding, and sure enough, she recognized the boy waiting for her in the tunnel.

“Come on,” Nick said, grabbing her hand.  She pulled away immediately.  He felt too real.  But he wasn’t real.  He couldn’t _be_ real.

The four-year-old shrugged as if to say “suit yourself” and took off down the tunnel.  Parker took a deep breath before following him.

* * *

 

Sophie sat, still and quiet, on the temple floor, easily falling back into old habits.  She couldn’t help but picture Nate in this situation.  He’d be pacing back and forth, his mind racing, maybe even talking to himself.  It would drive him mad, not being able to know what was going on, what Parker was doing.  He never was good at giving up control of a situation.  It made him a great criminal mastermind and con artist, but it would have made him a terrible Jedi.

Not that she herself was a particularly good Jedi anymore, she reasoned.  If anyone she’d known during her years in the Order could see her now, she doubted they would recognize the person she’d become.  Still, she had long since embraced the changes she’d had to make in the past fifteen years.  She had very few regrets and doubts and the ones she did have, she kept hidden away where only she would ever see them.  One of those hidden doubts was whether she still had what it took to teach Parker.  But what was the alternative?  Just leave Parker untrained and hope her powers never grew past her control?

In another lifetime, Parker might have grown up in the Temple.  She wouldn’t have to be trained by someone who had spent more than a decade hiding her abilities, throwing her Jedi training to the wind, and lying to everyone she met.  But things were all so different now.  Things would never be the same as they once were.  She and Parker and Kanan and Ezra could find a hundred other Jedi scattered across the galaxy and rebuild the Order from the ground up and things would still never be the same again.  So for better or worse, here they were.

And Sophie had no regrets.

* * *

 

Eliot glanced over at Kanan to see the Jedi watching him intently.

“You know, we’re supposed to be keeping our eyes out for Imperials,” Eliot said.  When Kanan looked away, Eliot glared and asked “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You might as well have a question mark written on your forehead,” Eliot said.  “What is it?  It’s not like we don’t have the time.”

“It’s just -- how did you end up working with a Jedi?” Kanan asked.

“It used to be just Nate and Sophie on the crew,” Eliot said.  “I was a bounty hunter back then.  They needed some extra muscle for a job and they brought me in.  After I worked a couple jobs with ‘em, we decided to make it permanent.”

Eliot absently tapped his fingers against the hilt of his lightsaber.  He could feel Kanan’s eyes on him, feel the tension in the air as the Jedi instantly tensed up at the sight of Eliot’s hand near his weapon.  Eliot held in a sigh of frustration and forced himself to stop tapping.  He couldn’t blame Kanan for not trusting him.  In Kanan’s position, he’d feel exactly the same way.

“What about you?” he asked, trying to diffuse the tension.  “What’s your story?”

“Hera just kind of pulled me in on a job she ran a few years ago,” Kanan said.  “It was just the two of us and Chopper until the kids came along.”

Eliot chose not to comment on the distinctly dad-like phrasing.

Without warning, Eliot felt a spike of distress through the Force.  Almost involuntarily, he looked up, his eyes narrowing as he focused his gaze on the temple, as if he’d somehow be able to see Parker if he looked hard enough.

“What’s wrong?”  Eliot was just barely paying enough attention to hear Kanan’s question.

“Parker,” he muttered, trying to push down the feelings rising in his chest.  “She’s not in danger, it’s just -- I don’t know, something scared her, I guess.”

He looked away from the temple and back at the Jedi.

“Do you know what’s happening in there?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Kanan said.  “I know she has to face her insecurities and fears, but --”

“But that could mean anything,” Eliot finished the sentence.  What went on in the deepest parts of Parker’s head was a well-guarded secret from everyone, even Sophie.

“You’re worried about her.”  It wasn’t a question.

“Obviously,” Eliot muttered.

“You think she can’t handle it?” Kanan asked.

“Of course she can,” Eliot said, getting briefly defensive of his friend.  “It’s just that she’s --” he clenched his jaw in frustration.  Why was he even trying to explain this to Kanan, who barely knew Parker?

“What if I screwed this up for her?” Eliot said.  Again, it was almost involuntary.  “I shouldn’t be here.  I shouldn’t be teachin’ her.  I didn’t want to in the first place, and this is why.  What if she’s too close to the Dark Side?  If she is, and something goes wrong in there, that’s on me.”

When he stopped talking, he grew immediately embarrassed by his sudden outburst of emotion.  But still, saying it, even to Kanan, who he barely knew and who didn’t trust him, made him feel just a little freer.

“If you didn’t want to teach her, why did you?” Kanan asked.  It was curiosity, not judgement, and maybe, Eliot suspected, the Jedi was trying to get him to focus on something other than what was going on inside the temple, which neither of them had any control over.

“Sophie talked me into it,” Eliot said, willingly letting himself be distracted.  As much as he hated it, there was nothing he could do, after all.  “Her lightsaber was destroyed, so she got me to help teach Parker to use hers.”  He leaned against the side of the ship.  “I tried to convince her to ask you for help,” he said.  “Figured that would be safer.”

Kanan considered Eliot’s words.  He was seeing the other man in a slightly different light.  It was obvious he didn’t trust easily, but he’d been willing to let Parker, someone he clearly cared about, learn from a person their crew barely knew.

“What?” Eliot asked, the word coming out a little more aggressively than he’d meant it to.  He couldn’t tell what the Jedi was thinking, but he knew it was related to what he’d just said.

Kanan hesitated, searching for the right way to say what was on his mind.

“You really want to keep her away from the darkness, don’t you?” he asked.

“I know what it’s like,” Eliot said.  “I don’t want that for anyone else, especially Parker.  She’s been through enough.  I’m guessing you’re not as familiar with it, but that darkness…it drowns you and pulls you down until you can't fight it.”

Eliot was quiet for a moment, lost in thought.  To his credit, Kanan said nothing, understanding what must be going on in Eliot’s head.  After a moment, Eliot snapped out of it.

“Look,” he said, “you don’t have to trust me around your kid --”

“Ezra’s not my -- never mind.”

“Point is if I was in your position, a Jedi, training a kid, trying to keep him safe from the Empire, I wouldn’t trust a former Inquisitor, either,” Eliot said.  “You’re doing your job.  I’m doing mine.  I keep my team safe, and if I ever had to, I’d keep your team safe, too.”

“You did save us once,” Kanan said, conceding that point to Eliot.  He _had_ held off the Inquisitor to give all of them a chance to escape the Imperial complex.

“It’s what I do.”

* * *

 

Parker had to run to keep up with Nick and she was beginning to tire out.  He was four, how was he so much faster than her?

“Come on!” he called from up ahead.  He rounded a curve in the tunnel and Parker lost sight of him.  She picked up her pace.

There was a scream, a crash, the cracking sound of bones snapping, and Parker froze in her tracks.

Slowly, she inched her way forward around the bend only to find that Nick was gone.  Instead, she was looking at two people, a human man and woman, seated at a table.  The woman had a tight grip on a mug of something on the table in front of her.  Her eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying.  The man had one hand on her arm, trying to comfort her.

“I can’t do this anymore,” the woman said.

Parker put her hands over her ears.  She knew how this conversation went.  She’d heard it before.  Nick was dead and now they wanted her gone, too.  She’d screwed up and their son was dead and there was no reason to keep her around anymore.

But trying to block it out did nothing.  She heard every word.  It was all ingrained in her head.

She turned around and started to run, only to trip and fall, she didn’t see over what.  As her knees hit the ground, the scene around her vanished.  She didn’t need to look around to know where she was.  She was back home, on the ship.  She was sitting on the floor in the briefing room, and right in front of her was…no.

Hardison.  Lying perfectly still, no sign of movement.  Dead.  She knew he’d fallen.  She was there.  She could have saved him.  She didn’t.  And now he was dead.  Slowly, she reached out toward her friend’s hand.

“Don’t you fucking touch him!” Eliot snapped as he appeared behind her.  He grabbed her arm, his nails digging into her skin as he hauled her to her feet.

 As she stood up, she saw Nate and Sophie.  Sophie had been crying.  Nate had an arm around her shoulders.  They looked too much like her foster parents had.

“I told you,” Eliot said.  “I told both of you it was too much for her to handle.  And look what happened!”

“Eliot,” Nate said, a warning in his voice as his arm tightened protectively around Sophie’s shoulders.  Sophie shook her head.

“He’s right, Nate,” she said.  “We shouldn’t have let her go on this mission.  It was too much responsibility for her.”

“We shouldn’t have trusted her to watch his back,” Eliot growled, releasing his grip on Parker.

Parker bit down on the inside of her cheek, trying to fight back tears.  Not just because she’d lost Hardison.  Not just because they couldn’t see how much she was hurting, too.  But because they were right.  She was supposed to protect Hardison, she’d had a chance to save him, but she’d screwed up, and now, he was gone.

“I’m sorry,” Parker muttered, covering her face with her hands.  She just wanted to disappear.

“Parker, it’s not your fault,” Nate said.

“Really?” Eliot said, his voice still furious.  Nate ignored him.

“You’re just not made to be part of a team,” Nate said.  “I should’ve realized that.”

Parker knew what that meant.  She knew what came next.  They didn’t want her anymore.  She had to go.  She was a good experiment, but that was over now.  She’d been welcome until she’d messed up.  She looked up at the three of them, at Sophie’s tear-stained face, Eliot’s anger, and Nate’s maddening calmness, white-hot rage burning in her chest, building to critical mass.  Parker felt her fear evaporate and even her anger faded as she snapped into a moment of clarity.

“I did the best I could!” she shouted, slamming her hand down on the table and closing her eyes as if that would hide her from their furious and judgmental stares.  “I tried to save him!  I _tried!_   But sometimes bad shit just happens and it’s no one’s fault!”

She opened her eyes only to find Nate, Sophie, and Eliot all gone.  She was still in the temple, alone.

“None of that was real, was it?” she asked.  There was no answer, not that she’d expected one.

She braced herself, waiting for whatever would come next.  But nothing happened.  There was no change in her surroundings, throwing her into another vision.

“Is that it?” she muttered.  “Is that what I was supposed to do?”

Something warm spread through her chest.  Barely realizing she was doing it, Parker began to walk.  She wasn’t entirely sure where her feet were carrying her.  She just moved on instinct.  As she did, she reached out and ran her fingers along the wall again.  Those sparks she’d felt before were stronger.  She kept moving, only to find herself in the room where the three tunnels had diverged.  She looked back into the tunnels.  She wasn’t supposed to go into each of them, was she?  She didn’t know if she could.

But that same instinct that had told her to start walking drove her forward, into the first tunnel she’d come through, back toward the room where Sophie was waiting.  As soon as she realized this, Parker started running.  The door ahead of her slid open and Parker stumbled back into the large room.  Sophie stood up, catching Parker even as she regained her balance on her own.

Sophie brushed some of the tears from Parker’s cheek.  Parker hadn’t even realized she’d been crying.

“Are you okay?” she asked.  Parker nodded.  She swiped at her own eyes, embarrassed by the tears.  Sophie probably hadn’t cried when she’d had to take this test.

“How do you feel?” Sophie asked as she gently guided Parker toward the door they had entered through, figuring it was a good idea to get Parker out of here as fast as possible.

Parker didn’t know quite how to answer that question.  She also wasn’t sure the words would happen if she _did_ know.  Finally, she quickly signed the words SAME, DIFFERENT, BOTH.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sophie asked her as they walked back through the door, stepping into cool fresh air.

Parker shook her head.  NOT NOW, she signed.

“We don’t ever have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Sophie reminded her, gently putting an arm around Parker’s shoulders.  Parker leaned in a little against Sophie’s side, her way of thanking her mentor for the reminder and for not pushing her to talk.

Parker looked up to see Eliot running to meet them.  She knew -- she wasn’t sure how, but she _knew_ \-- that he was feeling the same mess of things she was.

“You okay?” he asked as he stopped running and fell into step beside them.

Parker flicked her hand past the side of her face in the sign for WILL BE.  She felt Eliot’s spike of worry as he realized that what had happened in the temple had made her go non-verbal.  She looked up at Sophie, silently begging the older woman to take the wheel.

“She’ll be okay,” Sophie told Eliot.  “I think she just needs a quiet day.”

Parker nodded in agreement.

“Come on,” Sophie said, tightening her grip around Parker’s shoulders.  “Let’s get you home.”


End file.
